Bolshevik Leninists equated the agency of the working class acting through the party to bring the Soviets to power in opposition to the backsliding Mensheviks. Yes, and even against the elements in the leadership of the party who clung to stagism, and opposed seizing power when faced with the demands for revolution from the masses-Lenin and Trotsky defeated them and the October revolution was made. In that moment the agency of the class was expressed through the party and the capitalist class was defeated. Lenin observed and explained that without the revolution in Western Europe the Soviet republics would be isolated and that socialism would not be possible because the forces of production were too underdeveloped and the world market would keep them from catching up. Socialism had to be international to escape the clutches of capitalism. The imperialist invasion and civil war killed off the best cadres of the revolution and the bureaucracy replaced the revolutionary moment and dead worker cadre of burgeoning workers democracy of 1917 with a party built after the victory filled up with apparatchiks and technocrats opportunists allied to the winning side but not of the working class. By 1924 the working class lost agency and the bureaucracy led by Stalin revised the Marxism of Lenin accepting the defeat of the revolution in Western Europe the revisionism of Socialism in One country replaced the revolutionary internationalism of the first four congresses of the third international ushering in class collaborationist popular front politics as the dogma we now know as Marxism-Leninism. Socialism has never existed and more thoughtful apologists coined the phrase “actually existing socialism” to cover for their capitulation to the crimes of Stalinism. While the Stalinist bureaucracy in the degenerated workers states did not restore capitalism until the 1990’s they did advanced the forces of production and provide examples of what a planned economy, monopoly of foreign trade and nationalized means of production could afford the masses and in many, but not all cases, that was a better deal for the most oppressed workers living under capitalism. But because it was a plan run by the bureaucrats, apparatchiks and technocrats who cut their deals with imperialism for their own interests (under the non threatening slogan of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful co-existence”) at the expense of the world revolution they ultimately limited the gains the masses in “actually existing socialism” would enjoy. Today, with restored capitalism and the new imperialist China Russia bloc the terminal crisis of capitalism accelerates with inter-imperialist proxy wars, genocides and climate catastrophe. The same forces that turned over working class agency to the bureaucracy of Stalinist apparatchiks in ‘24 and ‘48 today turn over the workers agency to the bloc of China/Russia at the leadership of the BRICS and SCO. They promote this as a progressive bloc and stalwart against imperialism because China has been able to advance the forces of production in the epoch of imperialist decay. This they (and I am generalizing here but not really all that much) say proves China’s new economic model is the latest variant of “actually existing socialism”. And therefore the socialist revolution is not necessary there or even in the semi-colonies which can cut “Win Win” with China and integrate with the BRICS to escape the terminal crisis of capitalism limited to the western imperialism. This of course is a fantasy scenario, it robs workers of agency and dooms humanity. We need a new revolutionary workers International based on class independence and a transitional program to make the socialist revolution based on workers organs of democracy (Soviets) to establish workers power not bureaucratic usurpers selling us hybrids market socialism with xyz characteristics-such is the modern Pabloism. On Sunday, October 13, 2024, 4:51 PM, gojko rakic <[email protected]> wrote:
[Edited Message Follows] My only response to what Marv writes is that the fact that the state, or rather the leadership, controls everything—that forced industrialization and agrarian collectivization, the pervasive state control, where state security services declare anyone who criticizes the existing leadership or system in any way as guilty of sabotage and undermining socialist development, is called socialism or some sort of social revolution... Some Marxists have a name for this—Stalinism or state capitalism, and there is no socialism in that. Socialism is not a system where private property is abolished and a one-party dictatorship is established, essentially the dictatorship of an autocratic party or a single individual, without a foundation of democratic decision-making, and where workers themselves have no democratic rights to participate in management. Perhaps this is socialism according to the interpretations of Marxist-Leninists, but it has nothing to do with Marx or with the ideas of the first socialists, where the goal was for the working class to become the master of its own destiny and take control of society, not for someone else to do it on their behalf ( without working-class controlling them or delegate to them their demands). -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#32872): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/32872 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/108969231/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
